I wrote an article last week that said it would be hard to start Ray Rice for Weeks 11, 12, and 13, and that much like Trent Richardson, he should probably just ride your bench for the rest of the year unless you could find something that appealed to you on the waiver wire. Of course Ray decided to go off this week with 131 rushing yards and a touchdown, and this confuses fantasy owners even more on the issue of what they should do with him. The first stat that I immediately noticed for Rice’s season was that he has had two games where he had 25 touches or more, and in both of those games he scored 19 and 20 points for ESPN standard scoring leagues.
To break down Rice’s touches even further, out of 9 games(he sat out of one) he has four games where he has had 15 touches or more. It is important to keep in mind that he left a game early, but he wasn’t having a strong performance before he was hurt so I think the data is still important to include. Rice’s carries that are 15 or more account for 44% of his carries in games. His touches of 25 or more account for 22% of his carries in games. Thus far, Rice has only been a fantasy impact when he has a large amount of carries, but since he has only received 25 or more touches in 22% of the games he has played, it looks like that Rice’s production is more of an outlier than something that will be consistent. Rice’s health has also seemed to plague his production early on, but it is pretty difficult to start Rice knowing that most of his production is equivalent to the amount of times he is rushing the ball.
While this type of production is what fantasy owners were hoping for in the beginning of the season, it may have just caused more people headaches than hopefulness at this point.
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